A Matter of Time
by adrian11
Summary: An Origin is the simplest and most fundamental expression of a person. Often, it can be summarized by a single word, a single term that defines a person's most primordial self. It is a obsession, an impulse, an inescapable fate. In one reality, Shirou Emiya has the Origin "Sword". But the kaleidoscope is endless. What could a different Origin change? Time!Magus!Strong!Shirou.
1. The Beginning

A Matter of Time

* * *

"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."  
― Rose Kennedy

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."  
― Anthony G. Oettinger

* * *

A boy of seven years laid in his hospital bed, staring almost obsessively at a clock ticking madly on the wall across from him.

"_Did you hear me?_" The man offering to become his foster father asked again.

The boy continued to contemplate the clock, not answering for a second. When the man pulled in a breath to repeat his question a final time, Shirou responded, eyes not deviating an inch, "So, you're a magician?"

"Not exactly, but yes. Close enough." Shirou nodded, taking in this information as impassively as he'd taken in everything since the fire. Everything but the mad ticking of that _fucking_ clock.

He had learned _some _language in the fire. Far be it from most men to pass on without cursing the world, god, and anything else they could think of before they were immolated.

"Perfect. That's perfect." Shirou said, finally taking his eyes off the clock to stare into Emiya with an intensity that seemed to border on insanity. _Empty, hungry little eyes._

"And why's that?" Kiritsugu asked, despite himself unnerved. The eyes twinkled madly.

"_Because I need to turn back time._"

_/_

_This is becoming stupid_, Shirou thought as he grit his teeth, feverish sweat dripping down his forehead and back like a politician at a lie detector. Still, he continued to concentrate, slowly shoving the burning steel rod down his back. Not literally, of course, that was just what it felt like to create a magic circuit using one of his nerves.

As the process completed itself, Shirou felt his mind start to drift, and that's what cost him. The steel rod slid from his mental grasp, and a sharp pain made its way through his entire body.

"Aaaaarrrghh!" Shirou screamed as the worst pain he'd ever felt reverberated through him, pressure building in his head as his back curved painfully like a seizure patient. This continued until the pain cut off, quite suddenly, and Shirou's curved back collapsed to the floor while he breathed raggedly.

Staring up at the ceiling of the room where he'd started practicing his magecraft, Shirou repeated the sentiment that had so painfully distracted him. "This is becoming really, really stupid."

The door slid open as Kiritsugu rushed in, looking frantically around the room only to find Shirou recovering in a sweaty heap.

"What was that? Are you alright?"

"Great." Shirou replied in a tired but sarcastic monotone. "I'm doing absolutely fantastic."

"What happened?" Kiritsugu asked again.

Slowly getting up from the deck, Shirou lay sitting and breathing heavily as he responded, "Me failing happened. This process is taking too long. What's the point of being able to do magecraft if I have to rebuild my magic circuit every time?"

"_Rebuild what?_" Kiritsugu cut in sharply. Shirou looked up in confusion at the tone of voice. "My magic circuit. I mean, I understand that I have no magical potential on my own, but rebuilding my magic circuit every day is taking too long. We need to find a better proce…"

Shirou trailed off as Kiritsugu looked at him like he'd just suggested that worms enjoyed tap dancing under the full moon to Sinatra (Zouken sneezed as his greatest secret was almost revealed).

"..I've been doing something incredibly stupid, haven't I?" Shirou asked rhetorically. Kiritsugu put his palm to his face as he sighed at the insane little boy before him.

After an illuminating lesson on how not to almost kill yourself, Kiritsugu stopped the reluctant, hands-off training he'd been parceling out to the little-boy who seemed hell bent on becoming a Magus, as he understood that Shirou would continue, with or without his permission or tutelage, and most likely kill or cripple himself in the process.

And so began the still reluctant but now very hands-on tutelage of Emiya Shirou, in the abstract and dangerous art of magecraft.

If only the magus killer knew of the terror he was unleashing on the world.

/

Shirou knew his Origin the second Kiritsugu first explained the concept to him. It didn't come as some vague premonition or deep insight into his true self.

No. It was like finally learning the name of something he'd always known but never articulated, that some deep-seated part of himself was keenly, intuitively aware of, that his conscious mind could now put a name to.

_Time_.

In his mind, ever present for as long as he could remember, there sounded an insesent, forever ringing ticking sound. Asleep or awake, reading or learning or watching TV, in the back of his mind was always that rhythmic ticking, like the sound of some internal clock he couldn't escape.

Driving him forward. For as long as he'd existed, it seemed. Ever since the fire, he knew. He had a theory, that losing all his memories in the fire, that this stripping of his conscious mind had brought his unconscious mind to the surface, shallower and more deeply connected than in a regular human being, who buried the unconscious mind, that from which the origin spiraled, under the constraints of society and emotional attachments and memory.

The other theory, which was scary in a much deeper, all-pervasive way, was that the ticking had existed even before the fire, and that it always had existed and he'd never been a normal person in the first place.

Suffice to say that either way, Shirou was much more connected to his origin and innate nature than most human beings. More connected than was healthy, many would say.

Because finding your origine was tricky business. Even if you were unaware of it, it was still an innate, defining part of you. But once you knew it, once you became aware of it, its prominence rose immensely, and it became written in stone, an immutable fate from which you could never escape. An obsession.

Kiritsugu would only ever sever and bind. That was all he could do, one way or another. He would never heal, and all that he touched would invariably change. Like a string, severed and then bound back together, he changed everything he touched in this matter. It was what he excelled at. It was that on which he based his only true mystery, the Origin bullet. It was his destiny, written in stone since the words first left his mentor's cursed lips.

The origin is the starting point that defines one's existence and directs one's actions, more akin to an inherent impulse than a conscious choice, a unique instinct different in every creature, human or not.

_Time._ Shirou tested the word on his tongue. It seemed incomplete somehow. Yes, he could see now. Not time as in the passage of one moment to the next in its natural, primordial form. Time as humans saw it. Time as it was measured and divided by humans, time as humans tried to control it, to slow it, to stop the inevitable. Shirou could taste the true nature of his impulsion. Time, "To attempt to control time". To control the past, the present and the future.

To control the world.


	2. A Family Tradition

A Matter of Time

* * *

Time, _n_

_ethymology_

Old English _tīma_, of Germanic origin; related to tide, which it superseded in temporal senses. The earliest of the current verb senses (dating from late Middle English) is 'do (something) at a particular moment.'

* * *

The boy of ten stared down at his father's corpse through lidded eyes, the full moon's silvery light illuminating the porch. He didn't feel sadness, per say, but there was definitely a sense of loss, a nostalgia for his company that Shirou knew he'd never experience again. There had been affection, in their messed up doppelganger relationship, each of them an imperfect stand in for what they'd really lost. For Kiritsugu, it was his daughter. For Shirou, his humanity.

Sighing, the boy knelt down and touched his father's face, pushing a lock of hair out of the way. It was a forlorn, tentative kind of touch. "Goodbye, Kiritsugu. You failed to save the world, but in the end, you did save me." He knew he was supposed to cry now, but tears refused to well up. "I suppose that'll have to be enough." Getting up from his prostrate position, the boy put his hands in his pockets and strolled through the halls.

Casually, he picked up a key and opened the door, exiting the property. He had a priest to see.

/

"You want to desecrate your father's corpse in order to take his circuits?" Kirei asked, the priest staring at the small boy standing in front of the church door.

The boy nodded his head resolutely. "Kiritsugu told me a lot about you, priest-san. You're a spiritual surgeon, aren't you? This should be well within your capabilities."

Despite himself, Kirei felt an excitement start to build in his chest. Interesting. This boy was so interesting! "And he told you we were enemies?" Kirei asked, a creepy, searching smile stealing his face.

The boy finally looked up, fixing Kirei with an unnaturally steady stare, his eyes focused yet lost in a way that Kirei had never seen before. It was like staring into a time-machine, to a younger version of himself.

Searching. For purpose, for humanity, for acceptance. Lost, yet so focused on a search for meaning that the search became meaning in and of itself…

"The dead have no enemies." The boy replied.

The smile that stole across Kirei's face could've killed kittens.

/

Lying on a blanket across the floor, Shirou stared up at the church roof, taking deep breaths to prepare himself for the operation. His father's corpse lay a few feet from him, cold and immobile in a way that was somehow reassuring.

Kirei, the mad priest, prepared his tools, silvery scalpels and clinical scissors gleaming as he applied antiseptic. He sung a popular pop tune as he did so, clearly in a good mood.

"You're lucky you came to me as early as you did." The priest commented casually, still cleaning his knives. "Any later and it might've been too late, fortunately the soul stays with the body for a short time after death."

"Yes." Shirou replied to the man's inane chatter. "Lucky us."

"So," Kirei continued, "You want his crest, is that right? Some of it may be unusable due to the curse that killed him. Never seen anything like it." The priest lied.

"His crest, and any other circuits you believe are salvageable." Shirou answered.

The man's cleaning slowed. "Already, transplanting a magic crest, which is meant to moved, to a person outside of that bloodline holds high chances of rejection. Transplanting his circuits as well… well, I would put their chances of survival under 10%."

Shirou stayed silent for a moment. Finally, words left his lips autonomously. "Kirei, how many people do you think died in the Fuyuki fire?"

Kirei looked up, unsure where this was going. "Around 300, I believe." 336, to be exact. Kirei was always a man that appreciated details.

"And how many survived?" The boys voice became higher near the end of the question, as if he was genuinely curious.

Ah. So this was where he was going.

"One, I believe."

Shirou turned his head in the man's direction, staring at him for the first time since the conversation began.

"Where would that put my chances, you think? 1 in 300? Less than 1%. Not odds any gambling man would take."

"No," Kirei acceded.

That fey light twinkled in the boy's eyes once more. His voice was steady. "I'm a magus, Kirei. We make our own luck. I won't die, not so long as my goal remains unaccomplished. I refuse to die. That's why I'm not afraid. Go on with the procedure."

The austere man nodded, feeling something stir in his chest for the first time since Kiritsugu. Excitement. This boy excited him. He was so much more vivid, so much more _alive _than the others, not unlike the _heroic spirits_ he'd seen in the war. But, unlike them, who seemed like complete, finished works of art, frozen perfectly in time at their most heroic, this boy was unfinished. He was an unfinished painting, just waiting to be influenced, just waiting for someone to tilt the strokes of the brush.

"You have terrible bedside manner," Shirou commented as the priest stared at him fixedly for a minute, totally silent.

The unnerving man smiled like it was a compliment. "It is time to begin."

Even under hypnosis, Shirou screamed as his soul was butchered by his own choice.


	3. Progeny

A Matter of Time

* * *

"We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves."—Alice Block

"Determine to never be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of want of time who never loses any. It is amazing how much may be done if we are always doing."—Thomas Jefferson

* * *

A boy of twelve woke from his slumber at precisely five AM, Japan Standard Time. No alarm clock pierced the day with its shrill scream. No parent ruthlessly pulled off his bedcovers to prevent his lateness. No roosters croaked, and the sun didn't pierce his window to land on his closed eyes. His eyes simply shot open, at exactly five AM, Japan Standard Time.

Grumbling as he got out of bed, Shirou stretched lazily while he turned on the hot water in the shower at 5:00:30 AM. After a judicious application of soap but not shampoo—Once every other day, and not one drop more—he exited the shower precisely five minutes after he'd entered it.

Drying himself off took another minute, and the combined morning routine of brushing his teeth, applying his clothes and running his hand through his hair once to make sure it was just messy enough took three.

At 5:09:39 AM, Japan Standard Time, Shirou Emiya entered his workshop for a grueling morning of practice.

He started with eight minutes of meditation, which consisted of sitting, legs crossed, hands laying relaxedly on his knees, his breaths deep and steady. He found that starting a session with exactly eight minutes of meditation would maximise his magecraft training, priming his mind for the self-hypnosis that would follow and his body for the stress circuits put on it. Less than eight minutes resulted in slightly less effective results, while over eight did nothing to increase his effectiveness.

Eight was the golden mean.

As the eight minutes ended, Shirou began the process of activating his circuits. Kiritsugu, when he'd first taught Shirou to properly activate them, had told him that he need an image, something jarring or emotionally powerful that could fire his circuits to life.

It had taken time and much trial and error to find the perfect image, but now it came as easily to him as breathing. In his mind, he loaded a pistol. He cocked back the hammer, his finger on the trigger, and as the bullet left the pistol, his eyes shot open with the aria, "Countdown, on."

His circuits, 27 of which he was born with 13 of which he'd inherited from Kiritsugu, whirred to life, prana flowing through them and bringing up Shirou's body heat. Getting up from his seat on the floor, Shirou went through some stretches, before closing his eyes and muttering, "Time Alter—Double Accel."

An innate bounded field encased Shirou's body, isolating the flow of time within from without, doubling the rate at which it flowed, effectively speeding up every biological process. Thought, movement, reflexes, everything was heightened.

In a sedate stroll faster than a jog, Shirou made his way over to his training area, filled with some weights and standing punching bags. Lying on the floor near his beat-up punching bag, an old boxing bell rested, light gleaming of its silvery surface, the arm that rung it attached to a timer that Shirou set to 20 minutes. He didn't need it to keep track of time, it was more of a formality, something to set the mood when he began his training. Settling backwards in a diagonal, bouncing stance, Shirou brought his two hands up in a classic boxing pose.

Then he unleashed his punches. They darted forward, lightning quick jabs faster than the eyes could see, invisible but for the large impacts visible from the bag before him. Taking a bouncing step backwards, Shirou brought up his leg almost faster than his punches had been, a roundhouse kick almost throwing the punching bag to the other side of the room, if not for the fact that Shirou, having grown wary of recovering it every time he threw some weight into his hits, had chained it to the ground. This process continued, lightning fast jabs randomly interspersed with frightening kicks and vicious knees and elbows, before the bell rung through the air and Shirou took a deep breath, wiping some stray sweat from his brow.

He'd first gotten into boxing a little under two years ago, not long after Kiritsugu had died. Some punks had heard that he lived alone in a huge house near Ryuudo Temple, and had ambushed right outside the bounded field that deterred intruders with ill-intent towards its resident—The non-magus kind, anyway.

He'd been caught completely unprepared. Dazed with a quick punch to the jaw, they'd gottewn him on the ground and kept him there, vicious kicks to the stomach and face leaving him with a plump lip, broken nose and two broken ribs. His circuits were still recovering from the surgery and thus unusable, and without his magecraft he was left completely at their mercy.

They eventually tired of beating the shit out of him, and Shirou desperately crawled into his residence, taking off the next week of school to recover.

But the humiliation of getting ambushed and abused by such worthless wretches burned a hole through him from his sick bed. Much of his time was spent fantasizing creative ways to use magecraft to ruin their lives. How would they feel, Shirou wondered, if they suddenly all woke up in the bodies of old men, paralyzed from the waist down? Maybe then they'd contemplate what worthless excuses for human beings they were—for however much longer they lived, at any rate.

But as he came up with more and more cruel ways to ruin them, he felt that they were somehow… insufficient. They wouldn't—couldn't—know who had done that to them. It would be a rupture of the rules of secrecy all magi obeyed and could possibly get him in a lot of trouble. He could always kidnap them, but Shirou had no desire to babysit them, and wasn't sure how long he'd be able to resist killing them.

For Kiritsugu, at least, he would try to keep schoolyard casualties to a minimum.

And so, a different solution occurred to him, one that left him much more satisfied. He would still destroy them, would still do to them what they'd done to him times a thousand, but his solution would have to be a little more… hands-on. And that was the beginning of Shirou's training in the viciously effective science of Kick-Boxing.

As Shirou drank idly from a spare bottle of water, he remembered with relish the beating he had delivered to them only a month, one that had almost gotten him expelled from school if not for a little old school hypnosis of the principle, the bullies and their parents.

After that he'd continued, enjoying the sport and appreciating it as a viable method of defence, especially when his natural capabilities were augmented by magecraft. But, as in most things he set his mind to, he quickly surpassed the other kids at the gym he trained at. His instructor had continued to pit him against older and stronger opponents, until he was fighting evenly with adults twice his size, impossibly matching them when all indications, of body weight and muscle and force, demanded that his loss be inevitable. But there was always a way.

That he was smaller just meant he was more nimble, his less heavy muscles let him be faster, to weave between strikes, his smaller height gave him access to other... more vulnerable organs. And once they learned the importance of wearing a cup and came prepared, there always the stomach, and Shirou quickly became the gyms best jump-kicker, slamming his opponents to the ground with a well placed kick to the temple or jaws.

The key was, as with most things, practice. Without magecraft to occupy his time, Shirou had dedicated everything he had towards Kick Boxing, training incessantly, obsessed to the point of neurosis. That was Shirou's talent. Not natural born inclination, not genetic predisposition towards a skill. Instead, he simply had a talent for choosing a single thing, and concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else—sleep, human contact, entertainment.

It was all a matter of time. Shirou was a very rigid person, when one got down to his core. Despite Time's nature as a fluid, changing thing, Shirou instinctively planned his days down to the last second, aided by his supernatural internal sense of time, always actively doing something that would aid his end goal. He obsessively reserved every minute for his chosen goal, leaving small, hyper-efficient intervals for things like eating or, god forbid, socializing.

And that which made him a great fighter, is what also allowed him to become a great magus. Or at least, someone with the potential to become a great magus. Closing his eyes, Shirou put all his attention into completing his latest discovery, the missing piece of the puzzle Kiritsugu had never dedicated enough energy to solve.

He was still in Double Accel. If he was Kiritsugu, he would simply mutter "release accel", stopping the bounded field completely and suffering while his body incurred damage as the world fixed the flow of time he'd altered.

Shirou found the idea of suffering every time he performed magecraft repugnant ever since that one fumble with creating magic circuits wrong and almost killing himself, and had since decided on a motto_: If it hurts, you're doing it wrong_.

Accordingly, he'd developed his own method of releasing Double Accel. "Release Accel—Countdown 2-1." He muttered to himself. Carefully, elegantly, Shirou slowed time within his bounded field. 2.0 . 1.9 . 1.7. 1.4. 1.1. 1.

And when time flowed through his bounded field at the rate of 1—what he called the default flow of time within the world—he released the magecraft. Holding his breath, he waited for ravaging pain.

Nothing.

Smiling, Shirou positively glowed with satisfaction. He'd done it! He'd fixed the otherwise magnificent technique his father had created. Through careful analysis, and a refined use of his magecraft, he'd surpassed his father!

An outside observer might comment that Kiritsugu had never really tried to advance his magecraft beyond being useful in battle, and that with effort and time he'd probably have achieved that same conclusion.

There was no outside observer here today. Let the boy have his fun.

While he still can.


	4. Initiation

A Matter of Time

* * *

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."  
― Mother Teresa

"Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting."  
― Haruki Murakami

* * *

"You want to join the enforcers?"

Kirei eyed the thirteen year old boy before him up and down. He had long hair that trailed in a braid down his back, white with a few red strands valiantly fighting for their right to exist. Bangs hung to either side of his lightly tanned face. His grey, steady eyes looked through Kirei rather than at him, the mind behind them always working, always playing with some idea that would further his goal.

Never a wasted moment, and socializing was something he acknowledged as necessary but periphery.

"What makes you think I can help you get into the enforcers?" Kirei asked curiously.

"I don't want to join the enforcers, at least, not if I don't have to. I simply want to accompany them on a couple of missions. And I don't think you can get me into the enforcers. I know you can. Your existence as an intermediary between the church and the mage's association is not quite so unknown as you apparently think."

Kirei didn't even blink. He'd quickly grown used to Shirou knowing far more about things than any person his age should.

He thought over the strange request, turning it over in his mind. It would be easy for him to get Shirou what he was asking, with his contacts in the mage's association and the enforcer's themselves, many of whom he'd worked with semi-regularly.

But he was never one to miss an opportunity to turn things to his advantage, and as interesting as this request was, he gained no personal amusement from granting it.

Unless.

"I would be happy to, my young friend. That is, if I was absolutely sure you could handle yourself in such a dangerous environment. I'm afraid you might simply be too young…"

Kirei watched the boy take in a violent breath, mind spinning at a thousand miles an hour, no doubt loading dozens of arguments in his favor, until Kirei interrupted him with a proposal.

"Unless, of course, you were to prove to me your ability in battle."

The boy squinted at him.

"Are you challenging me to a fight?" He asked, the very idea seeming absurd.

Kirei smiled conspiratorially, knowing he'd caught the boy in a deal he just could not refuse.

"I'll go set up the arena." He said as he turned around, not looking back to see if his opponent was following.

Shirou stared after him, butterflies forming in his stomach despite himself.

This could… complicate matters.

/

Shirou stared down the man before him, for the first time taking stockpile of him as an enemy he would fight directly. His defined musculature stood out even under two layers of clothes, indicating a close ranged fighter and a history of intense training. Dressed in a concealing dark blue trench coat that most likely hid weapons, the man smirked as he closed his eyes and held his gold cross in between his fingers, miming a prayer.

Shirou sincerely doubted the priest was religious in any conventional meaning of the word.

"Should we choose a signal to start the match?" Shirou asked.

Kirei smirked that infuriating smirk. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a coin.

"We'll begin the second this coin hits the floor." That said, he flipped the coin, two sharp pairs of eyes following it as it arched up and then down. Kotomine reached one hand into his trench coat, pulling out four bladeless handles held between his fingers like animalistic claws. The boy, on the other hand, palmed the reassuring weight of a dagger he always kept, tied horizontally across the base of his spine, before pulling off his messenger bag, reaching in to remove a pair of well used, vicious looking trench knives.

"Time Alter—Double Accel," Shirou muttered.

They were off a microsecond before the coin hit the ground, beginning their match with a sharp ring as it bounced off concrete.

It landed heads.

As they met in the center of the arena—a large room apparently located under the church—their blades clanged off each other, knuckle blades glancing off the black keys Kirei had materialized from prana with a spark.

Kirei swung in a lightning fast diagonal cut that almost severed Shirou's head from his body. Weaving under it, Shirou's bladed fist shot forward in a disemboweling movement. Kirei's instincts, earned through a decade as one of the church's most powerful executors, allowed him to step back in time to avoid untimely doom.

But even as he retreated, a hand swung downward, allowing his challenger no reprieve from danger. One step and slight shift in stance left Shirou whole, as he pressed his advantage, jabbing Kirei with deadly strikes faster than most could perceive.

But, as it stood, the executor was his equal in speed and his superior in experience. No matter Shirou's prodigious skill and speed, the executor had seen it all before a thousand times over, and reacted with deadly counters that Shirou barely avoided. If this went on, Shirou would lose, no doubt about it.

It was time to change the stakes. Surprising Kirei with a sweeping kick meant to deprive him of his balance, he went for the throat as the executor was forced to jump.

Jumping is rarely recommended in a martial arts battle. Though useful and sometimes necessary to avoid a potentially fatal screw up, an experienced opponent would capitalize on their lack of mobility while airborne. Often, this was the end of the battle, as the enemy used this opportunity for an unavoidable strike.

Someone of Kirei's skill did not appear "often".

His blades blurring forward, he launched the four black keys in one of his hands, forcing Shirou to retreat or die. Jumping backwards, Shirou couldn't resist the smirk that took up residency on his face.

Just what he needed.

"Time Alter—Triple Accel."

Shirou's step left dust raised as he launched himself from his position, coming at the executor like a horde of angry wasps, attacking from all angles with lightning fast fists and sweeping kicks. The executor was forced to use all his experience in close range combat to predict and nullify this thunderous onslaught, the sound of blades clanging in quick successions resounding through the church's basement, intermingled readily with grunts and the sounds of flesh striking flesh.

They both played their parts. The tiger crouches low to the rocky ground, plants bending in the wind of its mighty roar. But the tiger's power was a passive one, held in the quiet weight of its taut muscles, the overwhelming wisdom of its experience.

On the other hand, the dragon is the pitter-patter of endless rain, the roar of the heavens and the force of the wind, full of active energy and serpentine speed, striking faster than humans could react.

Evenly matched neither could overcome the other, in perfect balance. Shirou was the dragon, and Kirei the tiger.

But a battle is a short, brutal affair, and no balance could exist forever before being toppled by the plans and manipulations of man.

Both opponents jumped backwards, seeking breathing room to recover from their quick bouts. Shirou breathed heavily, sweat pouring down his forehead and stinging his eyes. Glancing at his Trench Knives, banged up and dull from repeatedly hitting the executors Black Keys, he let his hands relax, the weapons falling from his hands to hit the concrete.

Kotomine too looked stressed, breathing heavily. He hadn't had a true battle like this since Kiritsugu. His training had waned. Once, he would have annihilated this brat. Now, he struggled just to match him. Watching the boy drop his weapons, the man smirked, accepting the invitation for what it was.

Dissipating his black keys, the executor placed them back in his trench coat. It was agreed. The battle would now rage weaponless, combat in its purest form. The executor's smirk morphed into the smile of a hungry beast, intense and bloodthirsty and more than slightly crazed.

Shirou's lips tilted upward despite himself. This battle, it was… exhilarating in a way that nothing else was. Those sparring fights with humans at the gym couldn't satisfy him any longer, and perhaps they never had.

He needed to sweat, to shed blood, to fight with his fullest capabilities, reach beyond his power and win. He wasn't satisfied with fighting humans. No, he needed to battle his own kind.

This wasn't a fight between humans. No, this—this was a battle between monsters. No mercy. No regret. No hiding. Just blood and violence. There was no space for anything but humanity's basest, most primordial realms.

The realms of beasts.

Dashing forward, the two combatants crashed together like two cars colliding, fists smashing into flesh on both sides. Shirou took a strike to the rib to bloody Kirei's nose. Kirei sacrificed his height advantage to sweep Shirou's legs out from under him. Rolling backwards, the boy launched himself back up with his arms, feet hitting Kirei in the chest and sending him flying. Coming together again, hopelessly attracted as powerful magnets, they met once more, but this time Shirou could detect a subtle shift in Kirei's stance. Something was different, something dangerous. His whole body moved in sync with some rhythm he just remembered, moving together with a unity the domain of masters. As Shirou threw his fist forward in a bling blitzkrieg, Kirei ducked under it and delivered an elbow strike so explosive Shirou coughed up blood, feeling his heart shred to pieces as he was launched backwards. The wall caved in as Shirou struck it with force like a bomb, multiplying damage as his bones cracked and broke.

His body collapsed into a gasping mess on the floor. Kirei looked on, slightly worried. Perhaps he'd gotten a tad carried away. He'd thought he'd finally met an equal, but as it turned out his prey was still unripe. He turned around, preparing himself to request some healing phantasm from his bodily Servant, he heard a raspy chuckly.

He turned around, honestly surprised to find the boy still conscious, shakily standing on his own two feet.

"...how? There's no way a human could recover that quickly."

The boy laughed shakily, interrupting himself with a gasp as his hand instinctively covered his broken rib. "Humans can recover from almost anything, Kirei, given enough time."

Touching his rib, the boy muttered, "Time Alter—Recovery".

Time around his rib accelerated feverishly, and when he removed his hand the rib was healed as if he'd been recovering for weeks. Accelerating a single part of his body, isolating it from the rest, was extremely risky business.

The damage done to his heart had been healed as well—up to a point. There was only so much normal human regeneration could accomplish. With Avalon, his healing rate was vastly faster than a normal human, but even then his heart would be weak until he figured out some way to heal it properly, most likely with magecraft.

Taking a deep breath, Shirou brought his hands up in fists, and prepared to launch himself forward, only to slouch in surprise as Kirei laughed out loud.

"W- what's so funny?"

Kirei looked at the boy for a long moment unable to contain his laughter, before speaking. "You really are something, aren't you? For some second-rate magus like you, with no teacher, to advance this quickly… you don't even realise how impossible that is, do you?"

The Emiya didn't take getting laughed at easily. "Are you done? Can we get back to fighting, now?"

Kirei broke into cackling laughter again, his face sore because he wasn't sure he'd ever laughed this much in his life. As his breath ran out, he waved his hand in rejection, "As much as I'd enjoy that, I think we're done here. You're ready." He added offhand, "And if we fight again, I don't think I'll be able to resist just killing you."

The bloodthirsty priest walked off, a slight limp in his step, announcing as he left, "Be here a week from now at 8:00. I'll have something ready for you then."

Staring after him, off balance from the anti-climactic finish of the battle, the Emiya let out a relieved breath and followed out the church.

He didn't want to be here a second longer than he had to be. It smelled tainted.


	5. Enforcers

**A Matter of Time**

* * *

Two figures hiked in the Albanian mountains, heavy duty equipment stored in plump bags carried on one of their backs. He followed the taller, more feminine figure, trailing slightly after her from the heavy weight. Communication was difficult in the blinding white snow and howling, bitter wind.

"How much longer?" Shirou asked, voice raised to be heard through the blizzard.

Bazett didn't answer for so long Shirou thought she hadn't heard, before she announced succinctly, "We will get there when we get there. We will meet with the other group of executors at a cave up ahead."

Shirou nodded, not wholly satisfied but understanding her annoyance. He didn't enjoy being reduced to a small child on a long car ride, but then again, he didn't enjoy being used as a pack mule either, so she'd just have to deal with it.

After another half hour of slogging through deep snow and winding, treacherous trails—on at least one occasion almost falling down the mountain, if not for Bazett's quick reflexes, they finally reached the cavern. Bazett gave him a look when they arrived, as if to scold him for how annoying he'd been on the way up. Shirou simply adjusted the straps of her heavy bags and replied with a mocking half bow.

"Ladies first."

She was not amused, but decided to walk in first anyway. Shirou was right behind her.

Walking into the cavern was like entering a different world. He could literally feel the bounded field separating in from out on his skin as he strolled through it, the contrast between cold and warm so sudden as to be slightly disorienting.

The inside was set up with mage lights along the walls, a fire set up near the middle, around which a ragtag group of men and women, all young and reasonably fit, reclined comfortably.

"The enforcers sure know how to do missions in style, don't they?" Shirou muttered to himself.

He looked up in surprise when someone responded to his rhetorical with an assertive, "We sure do." A young woman had stood from the fire with arms slightly spread in welcome.

She was pretty, slavic in origin with messy dirty brown hair held in a ponytail, but what really caught Shirou's attention was a vertical scar over her eye. She noticed his curious glance.

"Curious about my scar, are you boy?" Not in any way keen to insult those he'd be working with before he even said anything, a fake denial made its way to his lips before dying an ignoble death when she continued, "This is courtesy of a Chimera we were hunting down in the african plains. Persistent bloody creature, but we took it down in the end and I gave it a matching scar to remember me by. Now, come. Sit down."

As Shirou and Bazett got seated, the enforcers exchanged greetings with his temporary "supervisor", as Kirei had termed it. They all seemed to know each other, and get along quite well; however it was just as clear that the group that had been in the cave before were much more tight knit, and Bazett was as much an outsider as he was. A known outsider, but nevertheless separate from this quasi tribe of magic users.

Not surprising. Kirei had told him Bazett was a friend of his—The idea that Kirei had friends was an idea Shirou had had to see to believe—and worked regularly with the mage's association's enforcers as a contracted agent. But the enforcers themselves, of which there were only thirty in the known world, moved and interacted together with a certainty only breeded by implicit trust or familiarity.

They never talked over each other, unless it was in jest, and conversation flowed from subject to subject and person to person with an ease that Shirou found breathtaking to watch. At times, one or the other would touch an arm, or a shoulder, in easy displays of physical intimacy Shirou had thought impossible between magi. They drank, and joked, and ate crappy rations, sometimes entering torrid debates on anything from the sex life of Lorelei Barthomeloi to the pros and cons of spears over halberds, along with a particularly pointless derail into whether it was possible to imagine a color that doesn't exist (Go on, try it. All Shirou succeeded in doing was imagining a disappointingly real shade of turquoise.)

Lost in this, dare he say it, friendly atmosphere, Shirou was completely out of his depth. Snark and conversation he could handle, but this—this pointless, ridiculous… fun human interaction was something he could only witness in mute astonishment. Thankfully, they seemed to notice his discomfort, and allowed him to keep his silence as dinner wore on, before, inevitably, the conversation fell back to tonight's topic of interest: _Him_.

"So, Bazett, what's with this kid you're lugging around with you? Should I be worried for his innocence?" The scarred one—who he'd learned was named Samantha —asked in mock seriousness. Watching Bazett's cheeks heat up as she sputtered indignant denials was most definitely the highlight of the night.

Finally though, she came down from her embarrassment enough to form a coherent sentence, she explained their predicament. "It was a favor for Kirei. He asked me if I could bring his apprentice"—His what now?— "on a Dead Apostle hunt, so he could get some experience. I agreed, because it's so rare that Kirei ever asks for anything, I couldn't pass up his request the one time he needs me."

Samantha's eyes narrowed. "Kirei… never liked that guy." Laughing, one of her companions—a large, scottish looking man with a beard to match but no accent—slapped her on the back, snickering, "Now, now, don't get prissy just because the guy beat you to a few targets. Being a bad loser's unbecoming of an enforcer."

Samantha threw off his hand, asserting in a way that clearly indicated the opposite, "I'm not a sore loser! Something about that old lecher just gets under my skin."

The rest of the group laughed at her denial, leading Shirou to reevaluate his opinion of the veteran executor. If he could fool all but one of these magi—who despite their attitudes Shirou could tell were perceptive in the extreme, as was necessary for some whose life depended on quick tactical thinking—then perhaps his veneer wasn't quite so fragile as Shirou had thought.

Like recognizes like, after all, and Kirei's emptiness had been immediately obvious to Shirou upon their very first meeting. But perhaps someone more… human in mentality would find the immediate tells less damning.

Samantha's catlike eyes turned to him, and Shirou valiantly resisted the urge to shift awkwardly in place. "And what about you, hon? What makes you think you're ready to take on a Dead Apostle at…" Her eyes looked him up and down, seemingly unimpressed, but he could detect some twinkle behind her eyes, "twelve?"

"Thirteen." Shirou corrected stiffly.

Her mouth twisted wryly, before she said seriously, her body language becoming stern, taking on the burden of leadership, "You are to watch, and nothing more. If you interfere and get in the way, I'll put you down myself for endangering everyone else here."

Her remark hit him like a slap in the face, and he retaliated as if it was one. He mumbled no aria. The spell was embedded in his magic crest, and fell in line with his Origin, making the it more of an instinct than a conscious tool he needed to activate through something as ephemeral as words. The gears in his mind, moving the rhythmic ticking always present in his skull, accelerated.

And he attacked.

Appearing behind her faster than she could react, her eyes vainly followed the afterimage he'd left behind. He watched her reaching for a dagger like she was moving through molasses. But even as her hand reached out, he pressed his viciously curved dagger at the small of her back.

The enforcers around him had reacted, and by the time he'd drawn his dagger he already had five other enforcers surrounding him on all sides. A woman held a straight, silver shining sword pointed directly under his chin. Another had two gauntlets on either side of his head, ready to pop it in a microsecond. The other three had no weapons, just glowing palms and threatening looks, promising worse than death.

But the most threatening, the most inexplicable, was the dagger pointed at his stomach by none other than Samantha, held in a reverse grip behind her back.

The tension in the previously jolly hideout was balanced on a strand of spider silk, a tight string pulled taught and ready snap at any moment, any movement, even breathing too loudly, threatened to snap the string and send this whole meeting to a violent end.

The world was on a hair trigger. The next action would decide whether he'd made the right move, the correct conclusions.

Samantha shifted, and Shirou tensed, only for his shoulders to relax when she put her dagger back in its sheath and laughed, a loud, belly laugh. The enforcers around him stayed in position a second longer, before they too relaxed, and soon they were laughing too, until everyone was howling with out of breath laughter while Shirou and Bazett stood in mute astonishment.

Well, Bazett was astonished. Shirou just felt relieved that his intuition had been correct.

"Point made, boy. Point made." Samantha said, turning around and patting him on the shoulder in acknowledgements.

"The name is Shirou." He corrected. He didn't appreciate being reminded of his relative youth.

"Shirou, then. Let's take our seats again. All this excitement has me thirsty."

They returned to their places, relaxing into their seats like nothing had happened. If anything, they were more familiar with him, more liberal with their physical contact, almost like his little showing had earned their… respect.

"So, 'Shirou', you got a last name?" A subtle way of prodding him for his mysteries. From that name they could judge how many generations of magi had come before him, their subject of research, even some more well known mysteries if they'd encountered that bloodline previously.

Eyes taking in the magi around him, Shirou dropped a bomb in monotone. "It's Emiya."

The bearded non-irish irish looking man did a totally unplanned spit take. Samantha choked on the ration bar she was eating, then looked up with wide eyes to demand, "Emiya? As in, Kiritsugu Emiya? That son of a bitch had a son?" Examining him again, she muttered, "I don't see it."

A slight upturn of his lips. "I'm adopted."

She was quiet for a second, before she gave a little "hm". "So that speed, time dilation? You didn't even use an aria."

Shirou felt his smirk widen. It felt good to finally have his work recognized. Casually, he shrugged. "Sometimes you just don't have time to recite a poem mid-battle."

They chuckled, one man giving an enthusiastic "Amen to that."

Conversation flowed like alcohol deep into the night. Teasing ensued, barbs were exchanged, and Shirou felt at home for the first time since Kiritsugu died.

Tomorrow, the hunt.


End file.
